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Céad Míle Fáilte!
Mar. 15th, 2010 02:05 pmSo, one of my most favoritest holidays is coming up and thias year it's even more wonderfuller to me. I speak, of course, of St. Patrick's Day, the unofficial harbinger of spring here in New York City. This year it is projected to be sunny with highs in the SIXTIES!!!! Yay! It'll be so wonderful watching the parade from the rooftop of the Peninsula, I cannot wait!
The reason it's even more awesome this year is because--well, this goes back to last July, at my cousin Larson's wedding. Larson is kind of the unofficial genealogist of the family, of my (huge, cousinly) generation anyway. He has software and all sorts of charts about our family background, and he's always finding out new stuff. At some point during the wedding weekend, he and I were hanging out in the driveway at his bride's family's place, eating hotdogs, and he whipped out his laptop and showed me something. We have Irish ancestry. We have two Irish great-great-great- (something like that--several greats in there) grandmothers. This is extremely surprising news, because frankly the WASPs and the Irish did NOT intermarry into really quite recently--seriously, not until the last two generations or so. It simply Was Not Done--my grandmother looked down on the Kennedys, money be damned. They were Nouveau, and she always cringed when people would compare the large (9 kids), wealthy, toothy, glamorous (Irish) Kennedy brood to her large (7 kids, plus my dead aunt Maudie) wealthy, toothy, glamourous (WASP) brood...I love the comparison but I'm of a later generation. And I'm really excited to find out I have Irish blood! So exciting--yet another Celtic nation (I'm also a little bit Cornish on my father's side, as a little bit Breton on my mother's side)! Of course this isn't as big as my Scottish background, about which I've known all my life, and know what clan and where in Scotland and everything. But I love all things Irish and this just makes St. Patrick's Day even more special! And now I'm dying to know the story--as my mother said, "they must have been second wives." Why did my great-great-great (whatever) grandfathers decided to marry Irish women? From what part of Ireland were they? Enquiring minds want to know!
The reason it's even more awesome this year is because--well, this goes back to last July, at my cousin Larson's wedding. Larson is kind of the unofficial genealogist of the family, of my (huge, cousinly) generation anyway. He has software and all sorts of charts about our family background, and he's always finding out new stuff. At some point during the wedding weekend, he and I were hanging out in the driveway at his bride's family's place, eating hotdogs, and he whipped out his laptop and showed me something. We have Irish ancestry. We have two Irish great-great-great- (something like that--several greats in there) grandmothers. This is extremely surprising news, because frankly the WASPs and the Irish did NOT intermarry into really quite recently--seriously, not until the last two generations or so. It simply Was Not Done--my grandmother looked down on the Kennedys, money be damned. They were Nouveau, and she always cringed when people would compare the large (9 kids), wealthy, toothy, glamorous (Irish) Kennedy brood to her large (7 kids, plus my dead aunt Maudie) wealthy, toothy, glamourous (WASP) brood...I love the comparison but I'm of a later generation. And I'm really excited to find out I have Irish blood! So exciting--yet another Celtic nation (I'm also a little bit Cornish on my father's side, as a little bit Breton on my mother's side)! Of course this isn't as big as my Scottish background, about which I've known all my life, and know what clan and where in Scotland and everything. But I love all things Irish and this just makes St. Patrick's Day even more special! And now I'm dying to know the story--as my mother said, "they must have been second wives." Why did my great-great-great (whatever) grandfathers decided to marry Irish women? From what part of Ireland were they? Enquiring minds want to know!
